Liu Yu used his diligent, gentle, fair and honest talents to win the respect and support of the Hu people around Yanqi. Guan Yu, who arrived in the Western Regions half a year earlier than Liu Yu, also won the support and admiration of the 120,000 allied troops of all ethnic groups under the command of King Pingxi with his majestic and fierce style of rewarding and punishing.

Guan Yu is very clear about Zhao Xing's purpose for letting him come to the Western Regions, this is Zhao Xing's second base to achieve his grand hegemony, and he needs a commander who is absolutely trustworthy and has enough deterrence to shock the scene to preside over the overall situation, and he, the sworn brother, is of course the most suitable person.

Don't look at the current Yanqi people, Cheshi people, and the nearby Hu tribes to be respectful and polite to the Pingxi Wang army who are advancing westward, but they are different from the Han people who have been taught to obey the king since they were born in Guannai. When the fists of the Han army are hard enough to sweep away all the ghosts, snakes, and gods, they are more honest than the Han people, but if the Han army suffers several defeats in the Western Regions one after another, or even by the Wusun Kingdom, I am afraid that the originally honest Hu people will make a fuss.

Therefore, maintaining an absolute military presence in the Western Regions made Hu Ren feel despair from the bottom of his heart when he thought of the strength and invincibility of the Han army, and this was what Guan Yu needed to do.

Ma Chao's handsome guy is now the top in terms of personal strength, but compared with Guan Yu, he still has a long way to catch up. To become a commander in chief, you need not only personal force, but also the ability to see the whole picture and the prestige that you have accumulated over time.

Guan Yu is in charge of the Western Regions, Liu Yu can govern with confidence, and military generals in the army, such as Ma Chao, Tian Yu, Xu Rong, Xiao Ji, Zhou Cang, Yan Liang, Wen Chou and other generals will also obey the dispatch and let them go east, and absolutely no one will go west.

On the surface, Guan Yu did not lay down many new territories for Zhao Xing during the nearly one year he entered the Western Regions, and it seems that his record was mediocre, and he had a reputation as the first governor of the Protector Army. But Zhao Xing knows best in his heart the efforts and sweat that Guan Yu has put in in the past year, and he also appreciates the sworn brother who has now removed the weakness of his unruly and lonely personality.

For example, everyone knows that there are 120,000 troops under the command of King Pingxi, but no one has seen the real combat effectiveness of this army.

When Ma Chao led the 30,000 Xiliang Army into Yumen Pass, this cavalry unit, which had been in the army for a short time, had a big gap with the old Flying Tiger Army and the Blue Wolf Army in terms of combat power. Later, Zhou Cang led 30,000 Kunlun troops into the Western Regions, and the soldiers of this army were all from the reserves of all parts of the Liang Kingdom, and their combat power was not compared with the vanguard army, but also compared with the Donglai army and the Qinghuai army. Later, Guan Yu personally led the 40,000 Ping Western Army into the Western Regions, and the soldiers of this army were also temporarily transferred from the reserves, but the source of troops came from Bingzhou.

In addition, the 40,000 young men selected from the Yanqi Kingdom, the Black Mountain Kingdom, and the former and rear Cheshi countries, half of them were used as reserve forces and half as the main local forces, although they were all good seedlings who were skilled in swords and horses, but after all, they had not undergone systematic and comprehensive training, and their combat strength could not be compared with the Kunlun Army and the Pingxi Army.

The above is the situation when Guan Yu just took over the 120,000 regular army under the command of King Pingxi plus 20,000 reserves. If you can describe it in one sentence, it is "a tiger that has not grown up, looks scary, but it can't bite people." ”

Although Zhou Cang was in charge of training troops in the Western Regions, he was not a very imaginative and creative general like Gao Shun and Zhang He after all.

Guan Yu clearly saw Zhou Cang's shortcomings, and when there was no more suitable person to do the work for him, in order to let the king of Pingxi get out of the realm of "paper tiger" as soon as possible, Guan Yu did not spend much effort on the training and organization of the troops during this time.

In order to let Yan Liang and Wen Chou, who had joined the command for a short time, fully adapt to the operational concept of the Jin army, Guan Yu took these two "Hum Ha two generals" to go deep into the front line of each army, and personally supervised and guided the low-level officers to organize and carry out training. In order to enhance the flexibility and interest of training, Guan Yu also personally led the soldiers to carry out various martial arts competitions, and selected soldiers with special abilities to enter the units suitable for their abilities.

For example, soldiers who were particularly good at mounted archery were selected from the Kunlun Army and the Pingxi Army to be added to the Xiliang Army; soldiers who were not suitable for cavalry warfare but were capable of infantry combat were selected from the Xiliang Army to be added to the hoplite division; and soldiers with development potential were selected from various armies to join the coalition army composed of Yanqi, Cheshi, and Montenegrin soldiers to serve as leaders of the grassroots troops.

On the basis of making people suitable for their duties, Guan Yu began to pay close attention to the coordinated operations and rapid reaction capabilities of the troops, let the cavalry and infantry cooperate to practice the siege battle, and mixed the hoplites with longbow soldiers, sword and shield soldiers, halberd soldiers, and Shenhuo battalions to practice positional defense operations and siege operations.

In the process of organizing the training of the troops, the most thrilling and exciting thing for Guan Yu was still the cavalry phalanx that commanded the infantry phalanx and carried the Xiliang Army. Allowing the infantry to be trained on this simulated battlefield with thousands of horses neighing and galloping can quickly improve the infantry's ability and skill in dealing with the coming and going Wusun cavalry in the future, and reduce the casualty rate of infantry against cavalry.

After more than half a year of systematic training and repeated drills, the combat strength of the four units under the command of King Pingxi has made great progress. The current Xiliang Army may have the upper hand in a head-to-head confrontation with the Flying Tiger Army and the Blue Wolf Army, but if it meets the Dingyuan Army, no one knows which side will win in the end.

The two infantry units of the Kunlun Army and the Pingxi Army have undergone a qualitative change from iron embryo to stainless steel, and now these two troops are very similar to the vanguard army that Guan Yu once brought out in terms of temperament and fighting style, not only murderous and formidable, but also have a strong desire to fight and win. The two infantry units, which are not even in the eyes of the cavalry corps, make people's blood boil when they think about it.

Among the four troops, the one that has changed the most in appearance and temperament is naturally the Hu Cavalry Coalition Army. The sense of superiority as a "land snake" in their hearts has long since disappeared without a trace in the polishing of the past six months. The three brothers, Ma Chao, Ma Dai and Ma Xiu, used many classic cavalry offensive and defensive drills to let the officers and men of this combined cavalry unit clearly see the explosive power of the Xiliang cavalry that is indomitable and rushing.

In the initial confrontational drill of the Hanhu cavalry, Ma Dai and Ma Xiu often led 3,000 cavalry, and they could defeat the 5,000 combined cavalry troops led by Ma Chao himself. For such a result, the Hu soldiers of the combined cavalry force are naturally very unwilling, but under the leadership of Jin Ma Chao, they can still be defeated so completely, which can only show one point, the tactical thinking and individual training level of the Han cavalry is significantly higher than that of the combined cavalry troops.

Shameful and courageous, this combined cavalry unit invited the three Ma brothers and famous cavalry generals such as Yan Liang and Wen Chou to the army, and asked them to devote tactics, individual combat skills, and time originally used for rest and entertainment to high-intensity confrontational drills for the soldiers every day.

At the year-end assessment meeting to evaluate the combat effectiveness of each army, the combined cavalry unit finally shined brightly, and the battle with the Xiliang Army ended in a tie with the same number of people.

At this point, Guan Yu finally took a long breath, and then wrote a secret letter to Zhao Xing, which contained this sentence: "I have trained an army of hundreds of thousands of tigers for my third brother, and now the troops are ready to go, just waiting for the order to go to battle!"